Well, I downloaded Dropbox and it's not quite as techophobe-friendly as it might be (but then nothing is), but I think it's going to be OK.  Unless I froze it asking it to upload too many files at once.  Which I might have done.  It's not clear.

That's problem #1.

Problem #2 is more acute, because it looks to me as if, in backing up my email files, I've erased all the actual emails stored on my computer.  Whenever I try and open anything, I get (instead of the email) the following message: 

The message from XXXXX concerning XXXXX has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it. 

I now have approximately 7000 variations on my computer of that message, which is useles in the extreme.  I realize that it's all on-line, but I don't do my mail on-line, and I like being able to access it off-line on those numerous occasions when I'm in wi-fi free zones.

Eep. Also, Urk, Oops, and other expressions of distress.

Oh, and we're leaving town Wednesday to be away (and working) for 3 weeks.

Can anybody help me?

I'll be at Readercon Thursday-Saturday, if that helps.  I'm afraid posting here what perfectly easy steps I can follow myself will not do the trick.  In this context, you may count on my being inept, easily confused, and apt to make stupid mistakes.  Also demoralized and traumatized.  In fact, you can paint me a very unhappy camper indeed.

Much fun last night at Bank Street Books (www.bankstreetbooks.com/,)where we launched The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen with wine and apple cider and a wonderful, wonderful cake by Lisa Stock  (www.inbytheeye.com)  film-and-cake-maker extraordinaire.

And here it is:



Cool, huh?  The Kraken is the blue squiggle on the left--I'd post a close-up, but we're on our way out of town, and I gotta go pack.

I've been having a lot of trouble getting an external hard drive to play nicely (or, indeed, at all) with my Mac, and have decided that the best thing all around (not to mention the most likely to happen fast) is to sign up with an online back-up service.

The question, of course, is :  which one?

I have no trouble making decisions when 1) I have data to base my decision on; 2) I understand the data.  Neither of which cases obtain right at the moment.  And the computer's getting old and cranky, and I'm in the middle of a book and going to be traveling soon, and, and, and.

I'm going to need something that can take a full back-up of all my data, then back up the files I modify most often at regular intervals, because you wouldn't believe what a space cadet I can be about this kind of task.

Advice, please, oh Web-wise Gurus of LJ.  As always, in words of one syllable, as I do not speak Tech.

Thursday, we saw two plays.

The first one was what they call a backer's audition. 1 new play, in development, 6 actors, 6 chairs, 6 scripts, 4 hours of rehearsal, 1 narrator, a room full of people who either have the money to invest in a production or might know somebody who does or knows someone associated with the project who got them an invitation (that would be us). A few speeches, a read-through, some nibbles and free wine, a lot of smiling and earnest hand-shaking. An interesting cultural and sociological affair, really, and I'd have a lot more to say about it. Except that I was totally blown away by the play.

It's called Slap and Tickle, and it's about the Everard Bath House in New York, now closed. It's a series of interlocking monologues and scenelets (mirroring, now that I come to think about it, the patterns of bath house encounters (not that I've even been in a bath house (not that kind of bath house, anyway (but I've heard stories))). I was very impressed with how the playwright varied the speech patterns and played with the stereotypes and made it all work.

If it's ever produced, I'm going to be right there, clapping.

The second one was Coraline, the Musical.

I have to admit that I was disappointed. Not horribly--the acting was good, I loved the music, the set was wonderfully evocative, the book was way closer to the original than the movie was. It's just that I wanted to be in love, and I wasn't. It was clever. The words to the songs were clever, the way they dealt with the tiny little stage was clever, the prepared piano and the toy pianos were clever, the ghosts being played by rod puppets were clever. They were cool ideas, nicely executed, and I noted both their coolness and their execution. They also didn't move me an inch.

Where was the darkness? Where was Coraline's journey, her realization that plastic perfection doesn't nourish, that the desire for "normality" can suck you dry, the genuine horror of the Other Mother's narcissism? Oh, there were glimpses of it--in the Cat, in Mr. Bobo, the Other Father's pathetic dissolution. But mostly, things didn't get that deep. David Greenspan (who wrote the book) played the Other Mother like a wind-up doll, totally creepy, but I never felt her hunger or her psychic threat. Jane Houdyshell had a hard row to hoe, a distinctly middle-aged woman dressed in a denim split skirt and tennies and a twee little vest with hearts on it. Her Coraline was foursquare and self-conscious and unsurprised and, well, middle-aged. If she was surprised or charmed or enthralled by the Other World, she never made me feel it.

That said, my 18 year old goddaughter and her theatre-maniac friend adored it. I did notice, however, that they mostly talked about the pianos (which were, indeed, prime) and the Cat (who was utterly cat-like, for a guy in a black suit and Chucks and a pork-pie hat) and Mr. Bobo's mice at the end (who were hysterical). I don't remember if they mentioned Coraline.

Thursday, June 25 is the Official Publication date of The Magical Mirror of the Mermaid Queen.




Wednesday is the day The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen officially goes on sale!

It's also the day I'm going to give a reading (plus a small launch party) at the wonderful BANKS STREET BOOKS!

Here are the details:

Bank Street Books, 112th and Broadway, 5-7pm

If you're around, please drop by.  There will be cookies and juice and wine for the grown-ups, reading and signing and talking and fun.

The incomparable Catherynne Valente is writing a book and letting us read it in real-time, as she writes it. 

This strikes me as wonderfully Dickensian.  There's Cat, writing madly, while the printer's boy waits impatiently to grab the latest installment and run it down to be typeset in time to make the next edition of the magazine.  Except that she's typing, and there's no printer's boy, no typesetter, no mediation between her computer and ours, between her writing and our reading.

Which makes the project what?  Techno-steampunk?  Post-post-modern Victoriana?  Audacious?  Brave?  Awesome?  All of the above?

Dickens wrote to feed his family and pay his bills.  He got paid by the word.  Catherynne has family and bills, too, but she's doing this for love.  <em>The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Devising</em> is up on line, where anybody can read it for free and nothing, unless they choose to donate.  It gives us all a way of being patrons of the arts without having to build a chapel and commission frescoes.  It uses the internet to distribute things that make the world a better place.

Oh, and it's really good.  <lj user="d_aulnoy"> has written a wonderful review in her latest journal entry.

This useful addendum from a film-maker friend who had seen the play and read my post :


Not sure if it will travel, either, but it was in Washington in March and was not as well recd by the post (they didn’t like they way it satirized the American. They loved it at BAM the night I was there):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/08/AR2009030801643.html

Also, you can read about the productions humble beginnings in Stratford here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/theater/20rich.html

I especially appreciated the context provided by Margaret Litvin on the Muslim Voices site. She has a forthcoming book entitled Hamlet’s Arab Journey, which I believe was also her dissertation at Chicago.


It's a great article.

Friday night, we went to BAM to see Richard III: An Arab Tragedy, and I'm still trying to figure out how to write about it.

Oh, I loved it--no question of that. It was audacious, it was beautifully staged and acted. It made me think about Shakespeare's play and the role of women in unthinkingly patriarchal cultures and language and ambition and hatred in new ways. It gave me a way to connect emotionally and intellectually to the current mess in the Middle East more nuanced than the horror and pity the news generally inspires.

We discussed it at length afterwards, at a post-theatrical nosh at the Viennese restaurant across the street with friends who just happened to be attending the same performance. Ellen pointed out that setting the action in a country that culturally disenfranchises women allows a Western audience to understand the genuine powelessness of the Queens Margaret and Elizabeth and Anne. Also, the whole revenge motif set in train by Margaret's curses seems a lot less quaint when it's not a medieval queen who's uttering them, but a murdered emir's widow. Friend One remarked on how broadly some of the scenes were played for laughs--especially those having to do with the church (the American Embassy, in this redaction) and Richard's refusing the crown three times--which took place on a televised talk show. Friend Two (who speaks Arabic) remarked on how the Arabic went back and forth between the practical and the poetical.

And what did I think? For the first time in my language-centric life, I thought that Shakespeare's actual words didn't matter. I thought that the complete translation of the text into not only a different language, but a different culture and system of metaphor, was entirely the right thing to have done. I thought Margaret was terrifying beyond belief in her grief and rage and Richard equally terrifying in his cynical monomania. For the first time ever, I saw why Anne yielded to Richard, and might even fancy that she loved him. And I found Catesby even more tragic than Richard, who never learns a damn thing from first scene to last, and dies just as stubborn, blind, and self-centered as he lived.

I have no idea if this production is going to travel anywhere else in the US. But if you ever hear it's coming near you, go see it. Mileage in these things always varies, of course, but whether you love it or loathe it, it'll give you something to think and talk about for quite a while afterwards. Which is what good theatre is about, isn't it?

As those of you who have friended me on Facebook have probably figured out by now, I'm a total Quiz Slut.  I can resist games, searches, and tending virtual gardens, but ask me What's My Spirit Animal or What LOTR character are you, and I fall like a ripe plum (so to speak). 

So when stephanieburgis  posted her awesome results for the "What Fantasy Author Are You?" Quiz (Susan Cooper, in her case--which is certainly colorable and even insightful), of course I had to try.  Even though I really should have been getting ready to go to yoga which, in the event, I bagged in favor of Cleaning Up The House.

The result is Philip Pullman.  Who is only one of my all-time Perfect Heroes of Fantasy Writing, and I should only aspire to sharpen his pens (change his typewriter ribbons/calibrate his battery) some day.  Especially since we're both Highbrow, Peaceful, and Cynical.

[Edited to add:] The full-dress code resulted in Symbol Salad With Word Dressing, so here is the link:  www.helloquizzy.com/results/which-fantasy-writer-are-you/

Proving that I'm cynical, if that doesn't work (and I'm deeply dubious), here's another:  http://www.helloquizzy.com/results/which-fantasy-writer-are-you/?fromCGI=1&var_High%252dBrow=29&var_Violent=-17&var_Experimental=11&var_Cynical=11

And if that doesn't work, well, i don't know what to tell you.

My new website has gone live!

Designed by the talented and beautiful Claudia Carlson, it's not quite finished yet (Okay, it's still very much under construction). So I'd love it if you all cast an eye over it and let me know if there's anything that's confusing or you'd like to see on it. We're going to put a READ button on it, with an old short story or two and the first chapter of The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, any day now.

I'm very excited.

June 3, at the beautiful and historical Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library (425 6th Ave, at 10th Street), at 6:30 pm, I'll be reading from The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen with a galaxy of fellow teen authors.*

Here's the full line-up:

Micol and David Ostow, So Punk Rock
Elizabeth Scott, Love You Hate You Miss You
Delia Sherman, The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen
Jennifer Smith, You Are Here
Suzanne Weyn, Distant Waves
Jake Wizner, Castration Celebration
Jessica Wollman, Second Skin

Do come if you can. We'll be eating at Sammy 's Noodle Shop afterwards, and would love to have you join us.

*The adjective modifies the authors' work, not the authors themselves.

It was lovely.

What remains is a colorful impression of book covers and wonderful booth displays and people, a remarkable number of which (given the odds of meeting a friend on a huge and crowded convention floor) I turned out to know. We had conversations with many friends, including blackholly and justinelavaworm and ellen_datlow and China Mieville (who signed his new novel to us) and Jim Minz and Vincent McCaffrey, who I haven't seen in years and years.

And then we had dinner and came back to our house with some folks and read aloud from a book whose prose and photographs were a great source of innocent amusement (no, I won't tell you what it was), and had tea and cookies and then sent everybody home fell into bed and slept for 12 hours straight.

Today, I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie with rhubarb EK bought from the farmer's market Friday, and we're having rhubarb-asparagus couscous and salmon for dinner. And then, yes, we're going out, which is probably unwise, but it's a friend's performance, and they've been to ours and I want to go. If all I have left in me is smiles and nods, then that's all I have left in me.

Back to work tomorrow. Chapter 12 of Freedom Maze, here I come. Ready or not.

At libba_bray's Tiger Beat gig at Books of Wonder this evening, I saw a young man take out his iPhone, tap an application (if that's what you do with them), and call up the image of a Bic lighter, lighted, which he waved gently back and forth as Libba belted out "Midnight Radio."

Cool.

I must get me that iPhone I've been talking about. I just must.

Home now. Tired. Happy.

The past two days have gone by in a kind of swirl of conversations and panels, meals and signings and connections. I don't actually remember much about the "Authorial Intent" panel, except that I felt that our moderator, Vito Excalibur, was in complete control of the situation at all times and wasn't going to let anything bad happen, which, given the emotional temperature of the topic, was very comforting. I felt as if interesting and important things were said, both from the dais and from the audience. The whole thing gave me food for thought, and I'm going to go off and do that thing (think, that is) as I tackle this redraft of The Freedom Maze, my time-travel fantasy set on a sugar plantation in Louisiana in 1960 and 1860.

Speaking of authorial intent. This afternoon, during the huge group Sign-Out, where anyone with books to be signed can find the right person to sign them, a woman came up to me, carrying Changeling (which she had not read) and Horns of Elfland, an anthology of stories about music which Ellen and I edited a bunch of years ago, in which I have a story called "Sacred Harp." The woman had loved that story, also "CATNYP," and wanted to talk about how and why so many of my stories were driven by the protagonist's need to live with, circumvent, and finally break the rules by which her world was bound. "It's a cycle," she said (I'm paraphrasing here). "She learns what they are, the punishment for breaking them is hard, she doesn't really want to break them, but she does, and learns that breaking them didn't make her a bad person. It's really interesting."

Yes, it was. It was also news to me. Oh, I know I write about rules in the NYBetween books--fairy tales are all about knowing when to break rules and when to abide by them. But I realized that the same could be said of "Sacred Harp" and "Gift From A Spring" and a bunch of other things I've written over the years. Not everything, certainly. But a lot.

So we talked about rules some more. And I think I convinced her that I was genuinely surprised to hear that I had a rule obsession, and that I was rather tickled than otherwise that she'd pointed it out to me. After all, as unconscious revelations go, it's not particularly dire. I just hope I can be as open to hearing that a story or a book has revealed some less palatable part of my subconscious.

The con is in full swing. Panels (which I never seem to get to unless I'm on them, more's the pity). Dinners and lunches (yes, I get to those--the food in Madison is not only plentiful and cheap, it's FANTASTIC!). Conversations (as above). Parties.

I did my maiden reading (in public, that is) of The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen.  All the little fixes I made at the last possible moment actually seemed to work.  People laughed, which made me very happy.  And I think I know what part I'm going to read at the Jefferson Library gig on June 3.  So that's good.  The other readings were great, too.  Pan Morigan read from an upcoming YA about a boy and a magic shapeshifting key that really made me wish I could curl up with the rest of the book and some cheese curds, which I'll certainly be able to do--once it comes out.  Martin Meiss's SF novel portion was harder to follow aurally (I find that, for me, SF frequently is), but contained many fascinating details about bees and culture.  And Ellen read from the new story she just finished, "Dulce Domum," to happy and engaged silence.

Then I scrambled to keep up with the awesome memories and fine analytical minds of Farah Mendelsohn, Eileen Gunn, Margaret McBride, Steven Schwartz, and Sandra Lindow on The Fiction of Geoff Ryman panel.  Knowing when I was outclassed, I announced right up front that I was just there as a fan of Geoff's work, and left the analysis of themes and styles and politics to them who could be specific and give examples.  I'm not sure how useful I was, but I was cheerful.  Steve said a bunch of really interesting things about Lust which made me want to read it--something the cover had discouraged me from.

Dinner was at L'Etoile, a wonderful place with local food and an inventive chef at which we've been having dinner with the same friends on Saturday night for (mumblemumble) years.  Wandering through the Farmers Market Saturday morning, we deduced that there would be morels and asperagus and rhubarb on the menu.  Which there was.  I had chicken-fried morels with a poached egg and a slice of grilled shitake and salad (truthfully?  I couldn't taste enough morel--I'd rather have had them sauteed) and a bright green risotto that tasted wonderfuly of spring and shaved parmesan.  I also grazed off Ellen's asperagus and salmon over morel hash.  And there was creme fraiche cheesecake for dessert, which was a truly remarkable thing.

The rest of the evening was grand.  Long conversations about writing and books and life.  Watching Pat Murphy setting little bugs made of cell-phone vibrators attached to toothbrush heads scuttling over a table.  Sharing a large and mouth-puckeringly delicious rhubarb pie with a group of happy authors.  Trying on fascinating little hats with Kate Shafer and talking about Anne Hollander (who writes about the history and sociology of clothing--I'm particularly fond of her Seeing Through Clothes, but they're all good) and the difficulties of sewing cut velvet.  Getting crowned with plastic grapes at the Verbe Noire tiara party (which made me look like a basset hound or Dionysius, depending on whose comment I chose to believe).  Finally, I tottered off to bed after midnight, out of words and oompha, but full of goodwill to all.

I have not yet talked about The Kid's Books That Made Us, moderated by the incomparable sdn .  Nor will I, because I have to be on Authorial Intent vs. Reader Response (my last panel) in about 15 minutes, and should pull myself together to do that thing.

I can't believe this is going to be over tomorrow, but then, I  never can.  Ellen has already made our hotel reservations for next year.

To those of you who aren't able to make it: you are missed.

There was an LJ party tonight, with stickers and a sinful sheet cake with "Welcome LJers" ( I think--some of it was missing by the time I got there) in blue letters. Many hugs were exchanged and news caught up on before the excitement which is the first day of Wiscon caught up with me and I had to come upstairs to be very quiet for a while.

The day began, much earlier than I'm used to, with the Writers' Workshops. Four first chapters of four very different novels, all presenting fascinating topics of discussion. We talked about Narrative Tension, Exposition, Pacing, and Language, with much waving of hands and talking at once. I'm a big believer in the free-for-all or scrum style of workshop--which is only practical in a group of four or five goodnatured souls. Which this most certainly was. I think the participants had a good time. I certainly did.

The rest of the day was given over to the thing I love most about Wiscon: conversations. Because I was working the Clothing Swap booth at the Gathering, many of these were about clothes. Ellen and I have a habit of taking a piece of donated clothing--a jacket, a sweater, a particularly delicious dress--and trolling through the room with it, looking for its person. I placed a stretchy black velvet number with maribou cuffs with our very own ktempest, and a red leather jacket with a former Clarion student, and an assortment of shirts and jackets with perfect strangers I walked up to and said, "Here, try this on." Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't. But it sure was fun.

Falling over now. Tomorrow, a reading and a panel. And the Farmer's Market. Can't wait.

A Benefit Update Rider arrived today from my insurance plan.

Such letters are usually the bearers of bad tidings about conditions or medications the plan won't cover any more, so I turned the single sheet over with some trepidation. And what did I find? I quote in full:

Section XIII. Definitions has been updated to include the following definition of Spouse:

Spouse : A person's partner (husband or wife) in a legal marriage. For purposes of Dependent eligibility under this Certificate, spouse includes same sex partners who are married in jurisdictions that recognize same sex marriages.

Now, this doesn't make any difference to spouse and self, since our plan actually makes it cheaper for us to get our insurance as individuals, the married rate being more than twice the single. But it would make the world of difference to any couple who couldn't cobble together the elaborate finagle that allows us both to be insured under my Authors Guild membership. Plus, it's just generally cool and heartening. And there's not so much coming into the mailbox or through the radio that is, these days. So I offer it for your communal delectation.

Last week, on my way to a doctor's appointment, I walked through Central Park.

The Park is particularly beautiful at this time of year--just as spring turns into summer. The daffs and tulips and flowering trees have gone by, and the summer flowers haven't been put in yet, for the most part, so it's a green sort of beauty. The leaves are all bright and tender and fresh, like 5th graders. It was a beautiful day, too, warm but not hot, bright and blue and soft. Even though it was in the middle of the week and not lunch-time, the park was full to overflowing: tourists and students, the retired, the self-and-unemployed, parents and nannies pushing Graeco strollers and herding toddlers, the occasional business-suited stray dangling his/her suit jacket over his/her shoulder and making no haste to a cross-town appointment. On the benches and lawns and paved paths, people were writing in notebooks, taking pictures of their girlfriends, making out, power-walking, bicycling, bird watching, learning to walk, napping, conversing, playing checkers, texting, holding hands, giving babies their bottles and toddlers their Cheerios, a whole universe of strangers indulging happily in parallel play.

It made me happy and nostalgic.

I grew up in Central Park. My father taught me to row on the Lake on Sunday afternoons. We'd scarf hot dogs and vanilla frozen custard cones (Mama's opinion of such fare: "They're nothing but sugar and air. They'll make you fat. And you don't know what's in those hot dogs.") from the fast food stand outside the Boat House, then I'd splash around in circles until I got tired, when he'd take over and row us all right under the bridge and across to our favorite little cove, where we'd sit under a willow and look at the leaves and forget we were in a city.

He built model boats for us, too--a big, sleek one for him and a smaller one for me, with a lavender grosgrain ribbon pennant flying from the mast because that was my favorite color. We sailed those on the Boat Pond, of Stuart Little fame. Sometimes, in the spring, tadpoles came through the inlet pipe, millions of them, and my friend Edith and I would catch them with our hands and put them in waxed-paper cups to take home--with predictably tragic results. Sometimes I'd sit on the lap of the Hans Christian Andersen statue--I never had the nerve to sit on his shoulders or his head. In 1960 or thereabouts, Alice showed up, giving me a new, and much more interesting place to climb. I never had the nerve to sit on her head, either.

I made up plays in the park, squatting in the bushes behind the Boat Pond, mostly alone, but sometimes with Edith or Denny or Adelaide. "Here's the castle, and there's a dragon, and I'll be the princess and you can rescue me," with Russian spies (Edith's obsession) or gangsters (Denny's) or Greek warriors (Adelaide's) playing pivotal roles, and often derailing the plot altogether. Which was fine. The point wasn't the plot, anyway. The point was (for me) the characters and conversations and (for Edith and Adelaide) the intrigue and (for Denny) the running up and down boulders waving a branch and yelling.

I spent a lot of time there when I was an adolescent, too, and in the summers after I went away to college. I've laughed in the Park and cried there, behind a rock in the Ramble, hoping nobody would see. I've kissed lovers and told secrets and listened to them, and never told. I learned to ride a bike there (badly) and bird-watched (I didn't see much). I've waited on line for Shakespeare in the Park tickets, and seen Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in The Taming of the Shrew and Timon of Athens (it was excruciatingly boring) and Raul Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona (I totally crushed out). More recently, I've seen Romeo and Juliet and Hair, just last summer.

Most important, given my subsequent career-path, I've sat on rocks and under trees and on benches and scribbled in notebooks: poems, English papers, beginnings of stories, notes for my as-yet-unwritten (and totally unwritable) High Fantasy Trilogy Blockbuster, with 2 made-up languages and a magic system of Byzantine complexity. I wrote the first draft of a short story that revealed my heart to me, although it took me a little time to recognize it.

I've lived in New York for 3 years now, and I haven't spent as much time in the park as I thought I would. I live by Riverside Park, which has its own beauties, and I don't go east as often as I go downtown, and I'm usually in a hurry. And and and. I've missed it. I shall have to go more often.